Our Christmas's in the mid-forties

[Timetrvlr]

I remember Christmas in the mid-forties when I was 7 or 8. We were farm people and money was a scarce thing.

For some reason, it was decided that it was my job to go out and find a Christmas tree. The only evergreen trees available to me were scrub juniper trees and they aren't particularly attractive or of a Christmas tree shape. The first time, I slogged miles it seemed, through the snow, to find just the right one. I learned, after that, to keep an eye out all summer long for just the right one.

My dad made a base for it from 2" X 4"s and nailed that on so that it stood vertical.

We made the decorations. I learned to string popcorn to make long wreaths to drape on the tree. Money was found to buy a few sheets of construction paper. We cut this into strips and pasted the ends together to form links and we made chains of these to decorate the tree with.

My mother carefully saved some colored glass balls for the tree and she saved tinfoil icicles from year-to-year. It was also my job to draw and cut out a perfect cardboard star. We saved tin foil from cigarette packs all year and this was used to cover the star that went on top of the tree.

There was no talk of Santa Claus in our house; I knew if I got a present, it was from my folks, a pocket watch or a flashlight. Sometimes I got Tinker Toys or Erector sets. I remember a special Christmas when I got a yellow wind-up Caterpillar tractor with rubber treads.

The other night, we were out shopping for little kids toys for boys and I remarked to my wife that I would have loved to have had a little car or truck when I was a kid. All I ever had was a rock or a block of wood to pretend-drive on my pretend-roads.

 

[jujube]

Kids need more "pretend" items these days. So many of these hideously expensive toys I see in the store would, I think, bore the daylights out of kids in no time at all. By three o'clock Christmas afternoon, the kids are having a great time playing with the boxes the toys came in.

 

[SeaBreeze]

Very nice story Timetrvlr, thanks for sharing! :christmas2: My Christmas in the 1950s was very pleasant. We lived in a big city in an apartment, we didn't have much money so my father would wait until Christmas eve to go out and get us a small live tree, something like a Charlie Brown tree, that would just sit on the table. I was little, and my older brother and sisters knew about this, but I was oblivious.

In my home we didn't do anything on Christmas eve, I was sent to bed early by my mother to await Christmas morning when Santa would bring us a tree and a few presents underneath. After I was asleep, my dad would get the tree in that he hid outside on the fire escape, and my mother and siblings helped to set it up and decorate it with the hanging icicles, bulbs, bubble lights and balls. They would place the already wrapped gifts for everyone under the tree.

Early Christmas morning, before I got up, one of them would plug in the lights on the tree. When I went into the kitchen on Christmas day, I was always delighted, amazed at how everything was there and so pretty and sparkly. We all opened our presents together, and I would get things like coloring books, jack in the box, stuffed toy, etc. Good memories there, special simpler times. :sentimental: